Snake Robots — I don’t think this is a joke. The snake robot’s versatile abilities make it a useful tool for reaching locations or viewpoints that humans or other equipment cannot. The robots are able to climb to a high vantage point, maneuver through a variety of terrains, and fit through tight spaces like fences or pipes. These abilities can be useful for scouting and reconnaissance applications in either urban or natural environments. Watch the video, the nightmares will haunt you. (via Aaron Straup Cope)

The Power of Data in Aboriginal Hands (PDF) — critique of government statistical data gathering of Aboriginal populations. That ABS [Australian Bureau of Statistics] survey is designed to assist governments, commentators or academics who want to construct policies that shape our lives or encourage a one-sided public discourse about us and our position in the Australian nation. The survey does not provide information that Indigenous people can use to advance our position because the data is aggregated at the national or state level or within the broad ABS categories of very remote, remote, regional or urban Australia. These categories are constructed in the imagination of the Australian nation state. They are not geographic, social or cultural spaces that have relevance to Aboriginal people. [...] The Australian nation’s foundation document of 1901 explicitly excluded Indigenous people from being counted in the national census. That provision in the constitution, combined with Section 51, sub section 26, which empowered the Commonwealth to make special laws for ‘the people of any race, other than the Aboriginal race in any State’ was an unambiguous and defining statement about Australian nation building. The Founding Fathers mandated the federated governments of Australia to oversee the disappearance of Aboriginal people in Australia.